Mike Flanagan‘s Carrie has finally arrived, and fans can now shift from anticipation to picking apart every little aspect of the new Stephen King adaptation. io9 definitely had some questions after watching the finale, and interviews with Flanagan are now popping up that start to address some of them.
If you’ve watched all eight episodes, you know that one jaw-dropper is that Margaret White, Carrie’s overprotective (to put it mildly) mother, secretly has her own telekinetic powers. They are very weak compared to her daughter’s, though, and Margaret admits her ability to “flex” is unlikely to show itself again.
Speaking to Collider, Flanagan pointed out that the idea of telekinesis being inherited is sourced from Stephen King’s book.
“We talked a lot about the genetic component of this … how genes express themselves, and we also talked about the reality of parents and teenagers today, especially—and parents in general—that, when there’s friction, sometimes it’s because a parent sees something in their kid that they have in themselves that they haven’t learned how to deal with, and that kind of creates the fear.”
When it comes to Margaret having powers, “her abilities aren’t anything like Carrie’s, either because she suppressed them so intensely or because they were never going to manifest as fully as Carrie’s did. Either way, it meant we had the chance to do something I thought was pretty profound about parenthood and to understand that these two women, who have been loving each other but at odds throughout this whole story and who have ended on such a tragic note, had more in common than either of them ever knew.”
Samantha Sloyan, who plays Margaret, talked about the reveal in a separate interview with Deadline.
“I do think it does play into so much of parents wanting, trying so hard for their kids not to suffer the same things that they suffered, and in doing so, sometimes create a new trauma for that kid,” she said. “What I loved about it also was it really helped to anchor … all the decisions she made. She understands because she knows it’s real. And I think also, in the episode where we see the rocks fall, we know that Margaret knows, understands what’s happening. And I think that’s the moment where she’s like, ‘Carrie will not leave this house, because I know what the world does to monsters.’ And that’s kind of the intensity that we see throughout her, the whole time.”
Another big change from King’s book and most adaptations of Carrie is that the main character, played by Summer H. Howell, survives. Not only that, she escapes the fiery ruins of Chamberlain and heads off to start a new life.
In an interview with Inverse, Flanagan explained why he chose that ending for her. He said he knew from the start that his version of Carrie was going to make it out alive. And while he’s said he hopes Carrie will get a total of three seasons, he also wanted to be prepared for a different outcome.
“We had to end this so that if the last frame of video in episode eight is the last time we ever see this version of Carrie, that had to be right, that had to work … “If this is the end of Summer H. Howell’s tenure as Carrie White, I wanted to send her off into the world we thought she deserved.”
Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video.
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